st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS. 23
CHAPTER IV.
JOHN
MANSOUR.
THE Life of St. John of Damascus, which is found
prefixed
to editions of his collected works, though the
only one of the kind we possess, is in many respects
an unsatisfactory one. The style
is rhetorical and
turgid there is little
; precision about names or
dates; whilst one at least of the events related so
far surpasses belief, as to make Neander and others
stigmatise it as fabulous. This, however, is probably
an extreme opinion.
The author s name is
given as
John, Patriarch of Jerusalem and, as there were more
;
than one of this name and title, we are left in some
uncertainty about the writer himself. Without enter
ing into details of criticism, it may suffice to say that
he is considered to be the John, Patriarch of Jeru
salem, who was put to death by the Saracens in
the latter part of the reign of Nicephorus Phocas
(A.D. 963-969).
He is thus removed by two cen
turies from the subject of his biography; and the
reader has to exercise his own judgment on the
amount of credence to be given to the rude and frag
mentary accounts in Arabic, which the biographer
professes to have embodied and superseded. Still,
as the nearest approach to a contemporary Life that